


all the roads you took came back to me

by voxofthevoid



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Animal Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Humor, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Rimming, Rough Sex, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:55:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25428043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: “You should take a hint,” Bucky says. “Or better yet, take this as an instruction manual—” He gestures broadly at the bodies littering the floor. “—and put a bullet in my fucking brain.”“Bucky!” It’s grief and a flash of anger, and Bucky’s face tightens, lips a thin, furious line. “Buck, please. I don’t—I can’t imagine what you’re going through. But you don’t have to do it alone. Come with me. Come home.”There’s a moment, so brief that Steve will never know whether he imagined it, when Bucky looks tempted, when he softens, the stark lines of his face mellowing into something warm and helpless. And then it’s gone and blazing blue eyes bore into Steve.“To hell,” Bucky enunciates very clearly, voice steady with unnatural calm, “with you and your savior complex. Go find another lost cause, Captain.”It’s that title, barbed and deliberate and bitingly impersonal, that does it.The anger that was a quiet spark roars into an inferno.Softly, with bared teeth, Steve says, “Get fucked, Barnes.”“Do it yourself, motherfucker.”-Steve and Bucky accidentally fuck their way into domestic bliss.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 174
Kudos: 1166





	all the roads you took came back to me

**Author's Note:**

> I held a couple of polls on my [tumblr](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/) to pick the oneshot I should post next. This one almost won the May poll and won the July one by a huge margin. So here it is, finally!
> 
> The art is by the hella talented kocuria - you can find her on [tumblr](https://kocuria.tumblr.com/)!

* * *

* * *

After it’s over, Steve blames it on having had a very long day.

He knows, though, that it started long before.

\- 

They’re chasing Hydra, and they’re chasing Bucky, and Bucky’s not hiding his trails, not hiding at all, hunting Hydra with a cold fire that scares Steve more than his own lashing rage, even as it sets him at ease.

Bucky, the Bucky he knew, both that Brooklyn kid with a silver tongue and the war-wrecked Sergeant with his quiet smiles—he always burned cold. It’s a sign, not the first and hopefully not the last, that the grim-faced ghost he’s chasing is the friend he lost, the friend he couldn’t hold on to the one time it mattered. When they were kids, Steve clung to Bucky with the peculiar shamelessness of children, and when they grew and it became clear Bucky could do better than this prickly asshole who was more trouble than he was worth and would die before he hit thirty, Steve clung to him in more subtle ways, mostly by letting Bucky—Bucky, with his soft eye for strays and small, wounded things—pour his love into Steve like that alone would heal him.

And later, in the war, well—there’s not a lot that Steve regrets about the choices he made, that he can’t if he wants to stay half sane, but asking Bucky to stay, knowing he would never say no, is chief among the few he does.

Sam says, often, that maybe Bucky doesn’t need to be found, to be saved. It’s usually after they’ve chased a lead to find the still-smoldering ruins of another base, silver glinting just out of reach.

Steve understands why he says it. Just because Bucky’s not hiding doesn’t mean he’s letting Steve catch him. He doesn’t even let Steve get a good glimpse of him. He can see why it’s tempting to give up the ghost.

He just can’t ever agree, that’s all.

-

They’re in Siberia, and Steve’s aching and bloody from taking on five of an old elite death squad suped up on _Howard’s_ serum. There are bodies at his feet. His bruises have bruises, and just as he stands, there’s the sharp sting of a rib setting itself.

And there’s Bucky beside him, just as battered and bruised, and as Steve watches, he grabs his right shoulder with his metal hand and pulls. The joint pops into place with a sickening pop.

They’re the only ones in the base.

Well, the only ones left alive. Zemo’s long dead, slaughtered by the ghosts he raised, and the other Winter Soldiers—strong, fast, good, but not as good as Bucky, as Steve, and not good enough, in the end—are dead on the ground.

It’s been a very long day.

There’s something about the look on Bucky’s face that makes Steve ache.

“Bucky,” he starts.

“Shut up.”

For an instant, Steve is stunned into actually listening.

Bucky’s mouth thins.

“You should take a hint,” Bucky says. “Or better yet, take this as an instruction manual—” He gestures broadly at the bodies littering the floor. “—and put a bullet in my fucking brain.”

“Bucky!” It’s grief and a flash of anger, and Bucky’s face tightens, lips a thin, furious line. “Buck, please. I don’t—I can’t imagine what you’re going through. But you don’t have to do it alone. Come with me. Come home.”

There’s a moment, so brief that Steve will never know whether he imagined it, when Bucky looks tempted, when he softens, the stark lines of his face mellowing into something warm and helpless. And then it’s gone and blazing blue eyes bore into Steve.

“To _hell_ ,” Bucky enunciates very clearly, voice steady with unnatural calm, “with you and your savior complex. Go find another lost cause, Captain.”

It’s that title, barbed and deliberate and bitingly impersonal, that does it.

The anger that was a quiet spark roars into an inferno.

Softly, with bared teeth, Steve says, “Get fucked, Barnes.”

“Do it yourself, motherfucker.”

Bucky looks surprised the instant it leaves his mouth. He stares at Steve, who stares right back, hardly daring to breathe.

-

Steve Rogers has never backed down from a challenge. It has nothing to do with the serum. It’s a fact, better known than anyone else to Bucky fucking Barnes.

-

It’s spit and precome and sheer, burning determination, and it’s a heady combination, live and lashing in his blood, but it’s not easy or sweet or anything of the good, soft things Steve never let himself imagine except in that space between sleep and wakefulness, where nothing’s not quite real so anything can be real and he could imagine a world Bucky was more than his longsuffering best friend.

This isn’t that, but it’s Bucky, grunting and shuddering under Steve’s touch, twisting his body back as if to try and take him deeper, and he’s slick and tight and _hot_ , and Steve will take the messy, imperfect reality over a daydream any time.

“Fucking _fuck_ me,” Bucky snarls, metal fingers scoring lines in the wall. “The hell you waiting for, an engraved invitation in my assho—hah!”

Steve fists a hand in Bucky’s hair and yanks his head back, forcing his throat into a sharp arch he can’t speak through. Bucky whimpers and yeah, there’s nothing rose-tinted about this either, the fire that simmers in Steve’s veins when Bucky hurts for him.

“Shut up,” Steve says through gritted teeth, trying not to close his eyes as Bucky’s walls clamp around his cock like a vice. “Just fucking take it and Jesus fuck, loosen up.”

Bucky keens when Steve forces his hips forward, taking another inch, and every bit is a struggle, their bodies wounded from the fight and the animal brawl that found them here, Bucky braced against the closest wall without bloodstains, pants around his angle while Steve tries to break him on his dick.

Steve pulls out until it’s just the head inside Bucky, and he stills for a second, heart in his throat as he stares at the red circle of Bucky’s hole stretched taut around him. It’s obscene, it’s beautiful, and god but Bucky’s so soft inside, so small, like he’d shatter at a rough thrust. Then, Bucky growls and shoves his body back, swallowing Steve with a broken whine, and Steve knows that he can make Bucky bleed and still not break him.

It’s confidence and vehemence all rolled into it. He lets go of Bucky’s hair and lets his harsh, ragged breaths drive him into a frenzy of movement. Bucky howls when Steve bottoms out in one, brutal thrust, and his unfettered scream shudders into bitten-off moans when Steve starts fucking him in earnest. It’s a battle to keep his eyes open because Steve’s body wants nothing more than to lose itself in Bucky’s clenching heat, but Steve wants to memorize every moment of this, carve it into his heart, his mind.

Bucky’s arched back, black armor hugging the too-thin lines of his torso. His messy hair, tangled from Steve’s first and surprisingly soft. The sounds he makes, demanding and wounded in turn. Steve’s name on his lips, a curse and a prayer.

Steve wants more, because he’s always been greedy when it comes to Bucky, but they’re fucking in an abandoned Hydra base with the bodies of their enemies cooling a few feet away, and this isn’t the time to lay Bucky out of a bed soft enough to sink into and learn every inch of him. That doesn’t mean it’s not good, that Steve won’t remember every second of this for the rest of their sorry lives.

He snakes an arm around Bucky’s chest and hauls him up; it changes the angle, gets Steve fucking in shallow and tight, but the best part is Bucky, throwing his head back with a scream and gasping through the aftershocks as he comes clenching around Steve’s cock without even a touch. Steve slows down, half to savor Bucky’s sweet, shattered cries and half because his rippling walls tend to tear Steve’s orgasm out of him and he’s not yet ready for this to end. But Bucky growls, then, and his walls tighten around Steve with deliberate pressure, and Steve’s only human.

He pushes Bucky against the wall, hissing when their bodies part with a wet, sucking sound. Bucky swears again, something unflattering about Steve’s mother, and Steve shuts him up a fist in his hair and a slap on his ass, gut clenching when Bucky’s pale flesh yields a violent red mark in the shape of his hand.

“You leave my ma out of this,” Steve says, the words distant as he watches his cock disappear into Bucky’s tight hole. “She was an angel.”

“S-Sarah would sock you in the jaw hearin’ that, you fucker.”

Steve bottoms out with a harsh grind, tearing a shout out of Bucky. He’s an inferno around Steve, burning up and burning him in turn, and it’s easy, too easy, to let his brain go blank as he takes and takes and takes.

Bucky lets him, limp and whimpering, scrabbling weakly at the walls and cursing Steve with wounded fervor, egging him on one moment and begging him to come the next. He’s sweeter too, not by much, but just enough that when Steve uses his hair to turns his face into a wet, sloppy kiss, Bucky just gasps and lets him in, mouth as sweet, as hot, as his hole.

Steve comes in him, biting down hard on Bucky’s lip as it rips through him. It lasts forever and not nearly long enough, and it leaves Steve slumped against Bucky, breathing unsteadily into the crook of his neck, hair in his mouth and tickling his nose.

Bucky’s the first to shift in discomfort. They both hiss when their bodies separate, but Bucky’s sharpens into a stifled moan when come trickles out of his hole. Steve’s speechless, breathless, watching Bucky’s puffy rim gape and twitch around the mess.

They dress in silence, not that there’s much to do when they didn’t undress in the first place. Steve spends more time staring at Bucky than in doing up his pants; he’s a study in contradictions, body loose and languid, eyes sharp and wary.

Steve’s light like he’s filled with helium and so, so terrified.

The fear’s justified moments later, when Bucky re-sheathes a knife he dropped and turns to Steve, his face wiped clean of every emotion. Steve knows, even before Bucky opens his mouth, that he’ll leave.

He always leaves.

“Don’t follow,” is all Bucky says.

There’s nothing in his voice that invites an argument, however well-intentioned, and Steve’s protests wither in his throat.

It’s not the first time he’s had to watch Bucky walk away from him but it’s funny, how it never hurts less.

-

It’s only later, when he’s back home and Sam’s an exasperated storm three feet away from him, that Steve’s breath catches on a belated revelation.

“He remembers.”

Sam stops, staring narrow-eyed at Steve.

“What?”

“My mother’s name. Bucky remembers.”

Sam’s found many words to say in regards to Steve’s decision to fuck the guy who might put a knife in him in the middle of it, but this—this makes him soften, the edges of his expression trembling as he tries and fails to hold on to his irritation.

“God, you’re both a mess,” he sighs, dropping like a log on the bed, blatantly wearing the exhaustion Steve refuses to show because Sam is strong in ways Steve can never reach.

“I know,” Steve says, half his mind on the nearly healed bruise at his side where Bucky’s metal fingers dug in.

-

Next time, it’s Boston and for once, Steve’s not the one doing the chasing.

He’d prefer it, given that the role seems to have gone to mutant animals rabid with some madman’s ray-of-the-week. He rolls out of the way of a frothing horse the size of an elephant and takes it down with a well-aimed throw, ducking the swipe of an eagle’s talons in the time his shield takes to return to him.

He’s not as lucky with the gigantic wolf that bounds up to him; the shield deflects the worst of it but razor-sharp claws still rake down Steve’s thigh, cutting through thick fabric to leave shallow gashes that seep red. A kick to its jaw earns him some distance, and a sharp arc of the shield takes it out of the picture. The square isn’t teeming with animals anymore, but there’s still enough that Steve has to jump back into the thick of it, wrestling with a chimpanzee that seems very intent on taking a bite off Clint’s head.

Steve hears the bullet before the animal in his arms jerks and goes limp.

An instinctive glance at Natasha shows her engaged in a deadly dance with a fox.

Silver glints in Steve’s periphery, a familiar beacon.

Bucky’s silent, lethal, watching Steve’s six with bullets that don’t ever miss. It’s quick work after that, and when it’s over, there are four of them standing in a sea of slightly smoking bodies. Clint and Natasha seem a minute twitch away from pointing their weapons at Bucky. Steve doesn’t know what expression he’s wearing, but whatever it is, Bucky takes one look at it, winces, and turns as if to run away.

Steve wants to stop him but finds that he’s frozen.

“Bucky,” he calls, not expecting it to work and shocked when it does.

Bucky stops, sparing Steve an impatient glance that’s a sharper demand words could ever be.

“You know where to find me,” Steve says, quietly enough that the other two, standing on the opposite side of the square, can’t hear.

Bucky doesn’t nod, doesn’t show any sign of acknowledgement, just turns on his heels and stalk off with enviable grace. Steve watches him go, and his body, aching and bloody as it is, still finds the energy to burn hot at the sight of him. His palms itch with the phantom memory of warm, yielding skin.

Natasha has questions, and Clint has louder ones, but the authorities come and cut them off. Steve deals with it all, quiet and calm, but half of him is back in Siberia, reliving the hours that haunted him for months on end.

-

Bucky climbs in through the window and starts stripping the second his feet touch the floor.

Steve, sitting naked on the bed, fresh from a shower and idly prodding at the itchy scars left of the gashes on his thigh, stands up and lets himself be backed against the closest wall. Bucky slams into him with carefully measured violence, already down to briefs and a thin undershirt. He fits easily against Steve’s body, almost like he was made for it, and the part of Steve that spent every year from sixteen to twenty-six cataloguing the ways their lines and curves could fit against each other crows in triumph.

“You’re too thin,” is all he says out loud, sliding his hands under Bucky’s shirt to feel along his chest, fingers catching on too-prominent ribs.

“Shut the fuck up,” Bucky says, voice rough with anger but not quite covering up the confusion underneath. “You gonna fuck me or fret?”

“Can’t I do both?”

“ _No_.”

Whatever Steve could have said to that is swallowed up in Bucky’s mouth. It’s a rough, violent kiss, all want and no finesse, and it sends fire coursing through his blood. He tears Bucky’s shirt off, more accident than anything else, but when Bucky jolts against him and bites down on Steve’s lip to stifle a moan, Steve does it again, ripping Bucky’s underwear right off.

Bucky does moan this time, the sound trembling against Steve’s mouth.

Steve flips them around, slams Bucky into the wall hard enough to make their bones shake, and tries to crawl into the warmth of him. Bucky lets him, same as he did in Siberia, baring his throat to Steve’s teeth and crying out weakly when teeth sink into his pulse. Steve laps at the ache, gut clenching as Bucky’s life races under his tongue. He bites his way up the long, graceful line of Bucky’s neck and catches his mouth in a sharp kiss, licking in deep until he’s drowning in the heat of him.

Bucky kisses back, good and rough. His body’s taut with tension, but his cock’s hard between their bodies, rubbing against Steve’s thigh. Steve is no better, and it might be embarrassing, how it takes little more than a few moments of naked necking to get him hard and raring to go, but it’s _Bucky_ , and he was a revelation to Steve when he barely knew what to do with his dick, so it’s reassuring, almost, to lose his body and his mind to the suffocating warmth of his skin.

Steve can do this all day, kissing Bucky as they lazily grind together, but Bucky clearly has other ideas.

He growls, low and intent, and Steve has to kiss him deeper, harder, lapping up Bucky’s startled noise at the sudden vehemence. But then he’s grabbing Steve’s hand and pulling it around him, all but thrusting it at the swell of Bucky’s ass. Steve’s fingers curve over it without any conscious input from his brain, sinking greedily into all that soft flesh. He squeezes hard, and Bucky groans, tearing his mouth free from Steve’s to throw his head back and pant wetly.

Steve slides his other hand over, both of Bucky’s cheeks now in his grasp, and _Christ_ , it’s heady feeling, and there’s a voice in his head marveling at how he gets to have this. It’s nothing like the hundred daydreams Steve has had, but the reality’s perfect in its own way, because no scenario where Bucky’s so close, willingly and eagerly, will not be perfect.

Steve slips a finger between Bucky’s cheek and finds him wet, rim spreading open sweet and easy.

“Bucky,” he whispers, almost dizzy from the blood-hot throb of his cock. “Jesus, you—”

“Get on with it,” Bucky snarls, but the tough-guy act doesn’t hold up so well when his hole’s clenching hungrily around Steve’s fingers. Steve slides them in deeper anyway, in awe of how easy it is, how wet and _soft_ Bucky feels. He wants inside of him, the desire slamming into him like a freight train, utterly devastating. He adds a third finger, and it’s more of a stretch but still so easy, and Steve remembers last time, when he had to fight Bucky’s body for every inch, pry him open with spit and sheer, damning determination.

And it means something that Bucky came prepared, that he came at all, but Steve doesn’t have the brain cells to spare for the wonder of it, not when all of him is reduced to the slippery slide of his fingers inside Bucky.

Fingers clutch his hair, winding so tight that Steve’s scalp aches. Steve doesn’t realize he buried his face in Bucky’s throat, not until Bucky yanks him back and into a kiss that’s a clash of tongue and teeth. He curls his fingers inside Bucky, half on instinct, looking, seeking, and Bucky reacts with a muffled shriek, whole body arching against Steve’s.

 _Responsive_ , Steve thinks dazedly, parting his lips to swallow Bucky’s sounds. How long has it been since someone touched Bucky like this, not without violence or hurt, because there’s violence in this, there’s hurt, but there’s also so much love that Steve’s choking on it, and he wants Bucky to feel all of it, be full to bursting with it.

It takes him a moment to realize that Bucky’s talking, biting out words in between frantic kisses.

“In me, _in me_ ,” he’s saying, “Fuck, come on, Steve!”

Steve pulls his fingers out, rough and impatient, and Bucky shudders violently against him. He gasps the next moment, when Steve grabs his hips and lifts, but he’s quick to throw his legs around Steve, muscles clenched tight. Steve’s freshly healed thigh throbs a quiet warning, the scar tingling, but he pays it no mind. He’ll take a knife to the heart if it means he can have Bucky like this, bare and beautiful, all Steve’s, if only for a moment.

“Slick,” Steve says, cut off by Bucky’s frustrated huff.

“Don’t care,” he growls. “I’m wet enough.”

He’s not, he’s really not, but Steve sinks his teeth into Bucky’s lip, just to feel him clench all over, and pulls back to spit on his palm. It’s as gross as the last time, spreading it over his dick, but Bucky’s watching with darkened eyes and there’s nothing Steve won’t give him in this moment, in any moment. Captain America brought to heel by a pair of pretty eyes, but the raw truth is that Steve Rogers was born with Bucky Barnes fated to be his Achilles heel.

Steve’s fine with that. Even in his darkest hours, he’s only ever wished the reverse to be a little less true.

Bucky screams when Steve slides into him, frenzied need and gravity thrusting them into a savage whole. Steve’s got white under his lids and a fire in his gut, body and soul seared by Bucky’s tight, pulsing heat. It feels like he’s convulsing around Steve’s cock, every breath its own torment, but god, Steve would die like this.

He moves, can’t not, and Bucky just gasps, head hanging low as he heaves for breath. His body’s louder, slick with sweat and tight all over, walls clutching at Steve like they’re shy and hungry all at once. Steve hoists him higher and fucks him harder, and he thinks, at first, that the sound’s in his head before he realizes the wall is trembling.

Bucky rakes sharp nails down his back and grips his shoulder hard enough to bruise, and thoughts of the room’s structural integrity flee Steve’s mind. All that matters is Bucky, with his red, swollen lips and eager, yielding body, all that violence, all that strength contained in Steve’s arms and breaking around his cock. He kisses Bucky hard enough to draw blood, then kisses him sweeter, all the while Bucky just pants into it, broken bits of Steve’s name scattered among a dozen half-realized words.

Steve tears away from the kiss to bite along Bucky’s jaw, frantic with want, drunk on the warm skin bruising blood-hot under his teeth. He licks over the hurts and makes some more, hissing when Bucky draws blood of his own down the length of Steve’s back.

“Bucky,” he gasps, shoving in deep and groaning at the maddening heat of it. “You’re so good, fuck.”

Bucky’s first coherent word in a long time is, “ _Harder_.”

Steve almost laughs. He would if he had the air for it, but he doesn’t, so he buries his mad grin in Bucky’s hair and gives him what he wants, plunging in deep and ripping free with a violence that stuns even him, at least for an instant before Bucky’s shattered wail spurs him back into motion. Bucky’s not light, but even after the fight, even after healing, the serum in Steve’s veins is a miracle, and it’s nothing to haul his pretty body around and drill into him good and deep, again and again and again until Bucky stops screaming, stops whining, and just keens, a soft, broken sound that makes Steve’s blood sing.

Bucky’s cock is hard and dripping where it’s trapped between their bodies, and a part of Steve wants to touch it, feel the heft of it in his palm, but the rest of him is greedy, remembering how Bucky came last time on nothing but Steve’s cock.

He bites at Bucky’s ear and laves his tongue over the ache, whispering, “Come on, come on, lemme feel it, honey, come on.”

Bucky just gasps, clamping hard around Steve, impossibly tight, and fuck, he could die like this, lost in Bucky the way he was born to.

He thinks he says that out loud or maybe it’s something else, the angled thrust or the bruising hands, that gets Bucky shuddering, clenching, cock spurting wet between their bodies. Bucky whimpers, and Steve thinks he hears his name, but it’s drowned out by his pulse pounding in his ears.

Steve pushes in deep, once, twice, and buries a scream with his teeth in Bucky’s shoulder. His own come washes down his softening cock, dripping out of Bucky when Steve slips out of him. He can feel the tremble in Bucky’s thighs where they’re resting on Steve’s forearms. They’re shaking, the both of them, pressed so close they might as well be one entity. Steve wants desperately for that to be true, wants to pull Bucky so deep into himself that he won’t ever leave, but then there are mismatched fingers digging into his shoulders and pushing, and Steve pulls free of that dream with a crooked smile.

He's careful when letting Bucky stand; more careful than Bucky wants him to be, he can tell. But he doesn’t rush to put space between them the way Steve expected and feared. Instead, Bucky stands there, not leaning on Steve or the wall, but lingering all the same, face half-hidden by the messy curtain of his hair.

There’s nothing Steve wouldn’t give to have him stay. To keep him.

But Bucky has to want to stay, to be kept.

“Buck.”

Bucky raises his eyes, eyes fluttering open. Steve has eidetic memory. He cannot forget, not even when he wants to. But it’s a shock, each and every time, to look into Bucky’s eyes and realize his memory didn’t do justice to the shifting blues and greys of his eyes.

“Be more careful,” Bucky says, curiously devoid of feeling. “It’s not my job to watch your back.”

Steve doesn’t quite know what to say. He’s tempted to point out that it was Bucky’s choice to join the fight, but the flat expression Bucky’s wearing dissuades argument. And Steve’s never been one to hold his tongue, but after all Bucky’s been through, after all _Steve_ put him through, he figures he owes Bucky some silence, some peace.

In the end, Steve says nothing. When he smiles at Bucky, the edges of it bursting with affection that can’t be reined in, Bucky looks away.

He pushes past Steve, and Steve lets him.

Bucky dresses quietly and leaves the way he came, and Steve stands there for a long moment, staring at the empty window, mind stuck on the image of Bucky half-naked with come down his thighs.

That’s when the wall comes down.

Literally.

Steve leaps out of the path of flying plaster and has all of a second to be excruciatingly aware of his own nakedness before the sole occupant of the adjacent room comes into view.

Natasha is sitting cross-legged on her bed, still in her Widow gear. She has an expression better suited to someone munching popcorn.

Slowly, with painful deliberation, her sharp eyes trail down Steve’s body. She blinks, her eyes wide and fixed, and Steve burns with mortification when he realizes she’s staring at his crotch.

Her eyebrows begin an arched ascent to the stratosphere.

“God bless America,” she says.

-

They break a bed in Vienna and, two months later, Sam’s shower stall.

Steve fixes it and upgrades his shower as an apology gift, and he knows Sam doesn’t mean it when he says he’s going to kick Steve out, but he gets an apartment anyway. It’s only half because it’s been nearly a year since he started crashing in Sam’s spare bed, unofficially moving in after the Shieldra debacle. The other half is that if Bucky felt safe enough to find him at Sam’s place, then maybe an apartment that’s just Steve’s with an inviting second bedroom would plead an even more convincing case.

The longest Bucky has stayed after sex is ten minutes. They barely talk, unless dirty talk counts. Steve’s body has memorized the curves of Bucky’s body, and he dreams, now, in flashes of hard muscle and slick heat.

-

When Bucky does stay, they’re in Gdańsk, running on the high of blowing a Hydra splinter cell to the high heavens.

Sam and Clint are sharing the adjacent room. Steve steers Bucky carefully away from any walls and fucks him through the mattress, Bucky bent in half and gasping for it. Afterwards, when Steve sinks into a puddle of limbs beside him, Bucky tenses but doesn’t leap off the bed. 

Steve keeps waiting for the inevitable. But the minutes tick by, and Bucky stays, and Steve dares to hope.

The question still catches him off-guard.

“Did it get bigger?”

“Huh?”

Bucky narrows his eyes at him, utterly unimpressed.

“Your dick,” he says flatly. “Did it get bigger when you got blown up?”

For a second, Steve’s speechless. He’s also very much blushing, a detail that doesn’t escape Bucky’s keen eyes. Steve can’t read the expression on his face, but Bucky used to love it whenever Steve turned red for reasons other than anger. Steve used to hate it, but now, he just hopes it hasn’t changed.

“Yes,” Steve says when the silence stretches on and it becomes clear that Bucky’s waiting for an answer.

Bucky nods once. He looks oddly satisfied.

“How do you even know?” Steve asks, morbidly curious.

And just like that, Bucky’s face is blank once more.

“So you didn’t fuck him then,” he says.

“Fuck who?”

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Bucky says softly, with such absolute detachment that Steve just knows it’s for show. But he can’t react to that, not when he’s reeling from what Bucky meant.

“No,” Steve tells him, forcing the word out through a thick throat. “No, Buck. We didn’t.”

Bucky hums. His eyes are on Steve, staring through him.

“Thought otherwise,” he says in the end. “He sure wanted to. He was always looking.”

Steve finds that he still can’t address Bucky referring to himself in the third person. He wants to. _It’s you_ , he wants to scream. _He’s you, I know_. But he’s a desperate optimist, not a fool. And this isn’t his battle.

“I didn’t know,” is all he says in the end. “But I wanted to. I was looking too.”

Bucky snorts.

“I can tell.”

Steve chances scooting closer, and it writhes in the air, Bucky’s sharpening focus, but he doesn’t stop Steve, not even when he throws his arm over Bucky in the most awkward cuddle they’ve ever had. Once, Bucky would have huffed and turned and pulled Steve close, spooning up against him. Now, it’s a minor miracle that Bucky even allows the touch.

Steve strokes his fingertips gently along Bucky’s right shoulder and hopes the touch is soothing.

“I still do,” he murmurs. “You can tell. I know.”

He’s hoping for a smile, but Bucky’s jaw tightens instead.

“I wear his face,” he says, “but I’m not him. I’m never going to be.”

“Buck—”

“Buck, Buck, Buck,” Bucky sneers, tone soft and mocking. “Call me by his name all you want. It won’t change a thing. James Barnes died cold in a ravine.”

It’s meant to hurt; Steve recognizes the edge in Bucky’s voice and the cruel twist of his mouth. It was rare that this side of Bucky got turned on Steve, but it’s not like it never happened. They loved one another, not in all the ways Steve wanted but still in all the ways that mattered, but that didn’t mean they were always kind to each other.

Thing is, just knowing Bucky’s trying to hurt him doesn’t stop it from working.

Steve smiles, and it feels like a bloody wound on his face, dripping pain.

“What do I call you then?”

Bucky looks stricken. It’s only for a second, but it’s enough. He doesn’t answer. He makes as if to pull away, but Steve tightens his grip, desperate and not hiding it, and Bucky growls but stays, glaring at Steve.

“I don’t care,” Steve whispers furiously, voice hoarse from more than post-sex exhaustion. “You’ve changed, I know. You really think I’m here hoping you’re the same guy who died for me? That same Brooklyn kid? _Fuck_ you.”

Bucky jolts against him, but it’s not anger on his face. Steve has no words for his expression, but it pulls at him, ripping out words that spill from his lips in a graceless deluge.

“I wanted you then, and I want you now, and I’ll want whoever the fuck you’ll become. I’m not the same either, Buck. But I know me, and I know you, and you can tell me all you want to stop chasing you, but I won’t. I can’t, I’m sorry, but I can’t. I don’t know how.”

Bucky’s a blur of movement.

Steve tenses when metal fingers wrap around his throat, but perversely, the heavy weight that settles on his stomach makes him calm down. He meets Bucky’s glare head-on with one of his own, and even when Bucky’s hand tightens warningly around his neck, Steve doesn’t budge. He keeps his arms by his side, clenched in the sheets. He wants to touch Bucky—not to push him away but to hold him close. He doesn’t because then, he won’t be able to let go and it might break his heart if Bucky has to make him.

Bucky lets go of his throat with a huff but remains on top of Steve.

“You’re an idiot,” he says.

Steve doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t look away either, holding Bucky’s gaze challengingly. It’s not the most comfortable position for a staring contest, but Steve’s no stranger to sheer bullheadedness.

Bucky sighs and looks away.

Steve almost regrets his victory when Bucky gets off him and heads for his scattered clothes with the clear intention to dress and leave. But before he can think of something to say, Bucky speaks.

“It’s a shitty color.”

“What?”

“The walls in your bedrooms. Beige, _really_. The fuck, Steve?”

“I’ll change them,” Steve says dazedly.

“Make it blue.”

Bucky’s gone before Steve can respond to that and for once, the pain of him leaving is a dull ache rather than a piercing stab.

-

The first time Bucky climbs in through Steve’s bedroom window is the first time they fuck without violence to set the mood. It mellows them out some; Steve finds that he’s more patient without the sharp memory of adrenaline in his blood, that Bucky will growl and bark but will let Steve peel him out of his clothes and kiss him all over without trying to push him away.

He makes Bucky come with his mouth and swallows every drop, savoring the bitter tang of it. He sucks on Bucky’s softening length, tongue sliding over the wet head, until Bucky whines and starts yanking his hair. Steve still lingers for a few more seconds, drunk on the climbing urgency in Bucky’s voice, and when he finally rises, the utterly wrecked look on Bucky’s face threatens to undo him.

“Sweetheart.”

It rises to his lips without thought, but Steve means it with every fiber of his being. Bucky screws his eyes shut, face a blotchy red. He goes easily when Steve turns him over and shivers when Steve spreads his cheeks wide. His hole’s a hungry thing and opens so sweetly under Steve’s mouth, but it’s the noise Bucky makes when Steve slides his tongue inside that will keep him warm on a thousand lonely nights.

Steve takes his time, drawing it out until Bucky’s half-hard and begging, then drawing it out some more. When he finally slides inside, Bucky’s loose and warm and so, _so_ good, body welcoming Steve home.

“This is yours,” Steve tells him, lips brushing Bucky’s ear, every word torn out of his soul. “All of this, my body, my life, my home, it’s yours.”

“Steve,” Bucky whimpers, clawing weakly at the sheets.

He stays the night.

Neither of them sleeps, and Steve spends every aching hour hyperaware of Bucky lying as stiff as a log on the other side of the bed, and in the morning, his eyelids weigh a ton.

But Bucky leaves through the front door, and Steve’s happier than he has been since the he woke up with ice in his veins.

-

He doesn’t know when it happens or how, only that it does.

Bucky goes from spending the night once a month to twice a week to nearly every night. Heavy silences turn to tentative talk about inconsequential things to Steve pressing his wet cheeks to Bucky’s chest and whispering apologies right against his heart to Bucky waking him in the morning with a kiss and an insult. Steve comes back from a three-day long mission abroad to an apartment that feels warm, lived in.

He wakes, one morning, to the smell of coffee and realizes, abruptly, that he’s home.

Bucky’s in the kitchen, frowning intently at something on his phone while his other hand absently flips a pancake over.

He has to see Steve coming but allows the crushing hug anyway, barely grumbling when Steve buries his face in Bucky’s sweet-smelling hair and breathes through the realization that he has Bucky’s shampoo and conditioner and body wash lining his bathroom cabinet, that Bucky _has_ shampoo and conditioner and body wash that smell sweet and fruity and nothing like a nightmare.

“I love you,” Steve says, terrified and braver than he’s ever been. “Welcome home.”

“No shit,” is all Bucky says, grumpy and fond, far too much like a recalcitrant cat.

“ _Buck_.”

“Yeah, yeah. Love you too. Now let go, your pancake’s burning.”

Steve doesn’t let go, but he does loosen his grip enough to allow Bucky to salvage their breakfast, and if Bucky minds Steve staying barnacled to him the entire morning, he doesn’t say a word.

He kisses Steve after breakfast, mouth sweet from syrup, and Steve clings to him with shaking fingers, raw in places he can’t touch.

“Stay,” he says. “Stay with me.”

Bucky looks at him with soft eyes set in a tired face.

“Alright,” he says quietly. “I can do that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [collab: voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361448) by [kocuria-visuals (kocuria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria-visuals)




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